The singer's father and former manager opens up on 'Good Morning America' about his diagnosis.
Mathew Knowles is hoping that his recent diagnosis will shine a light on male breast cancer. The 67-year-old father of Beyonce and Solange Knowles talked to Michael Strahan in an interview that aired on Wednesday's Good Morning America about being a part of the one percent of men to have breast cancer.
"I am going to get the second breast removed in January, because I want to do anything I can to reduce the risk," he revealed of the precautionary measure. "We use the words 'cancer-free,' but medically there's no such thing as 'cancer-free.' There's always a risk... my kids have a 50 to 70 percent chance of getting the BRCA mutation and breast cancer. That's male or female. We used to think this was only an issue for women, but this is male or female."
Knowing that his family members have a higher risk of breast cancer, Knowles made sure he told his family about the diagnosis first.
"The first call was to my family, that was the very first call. Because this is genetics," he said. "It also means my kids have a higher chance, a higher risk, even my grand kids have a higher risk. And they handled it like they should. They went and got the test."
Knowles noted that he's "doing really good," and added that the diagnosis has given him a perspective shift. "Things that used to be important are not important to me now," he said. "I just look at the world differently."
The former manager did not open up about either one of his daughters specifically, and did not describe his family's emotional response during the interview. After Beyonce left her father's management years ago, reports surfaced that the "Spirit" singer and her father were feuding.
"These dangerous rumors defame my family name," he told ET in 2015. "They have no validity and hold no merit."
In October 2018, Mathew shared photos to Instagram of himself, Beyonce, and Tina Knowles at one of his daughter and JAY-Z's On the Run II tour shows.
"This past weekend I was able to spend time with family and witness one of THE greatest shows of all time," he captioned the pics at the time. "I was overjoyed to be apart of the experience."
Here's more on Beyonce's family:
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